In the genial French fashion of those times we soon got on terms of
intimacy with these and other neighbors, and saw much of each other at
all times of the day.
My tall and beautiful young mother (la belle Madame Pasquier, as she was
gallantly called) was an Englishwoman who had been born and partly
brought up in Paris.
My gay and jovial father (le beau Pasquier, for he was also tall and
comely to the eye) was a Frenchman, although an English subject, who had
been born and partly brought up in London; for he was the child of
emigres from France during the Reign of Terror.
[Illustration]
"When in death I shall calm recline,
Oh take my heart to my mistress dear!
Tell her it lived upon smiles and wine
Of the brightest hue while it lingered here!"
He was gifted with a magnificent, a phenomenal voice--a barytone and
tenor rolled into one; a marvel of richness, sweetness, flexibility, and
power--and had intended to sing at the opera; indeed, he had studied for
three years at the Paris Conservatoire to that end; and there he had
carried all before him, and given rise to the highest hopes. But his
family, who were Catholics of the blackest and Legitimists of the
whitest dye--and as poor as church rats had objected to such a godless
and derogatory career; so the world lost a great singer, and the great
singer a mine of wealth and fame.
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